End-of-life (EOL) issues and options for electric vehicle batteries

Nearly all global players in the auto industry are now producing electric vehicles (EV). Many studies indicated that by year 2020, 6 millions could be sold in US alone and about 11 million worldwide. As the number of EVs increases, there is need to have well-defined end-of-life (EOL) strategy for the batteries removed from EVs as part of collective efforts to transform the auto industry to environmental friendly industry. Recycling has been proposed as the EOL option for the EV batteries, but there are many issues that make recycling less justifiable, this paper lays out those issues and proposes remanufacturing as the alternate and appropriate EOL option. In view of this, the paper details research issues which require thorough studies to make EV batteries remanufacturing feasible and effective.